L.A.: What is it about Oregon and Portland that attracts these anarchist sorts?

S.P.: Ironically, it’s tolerance. The tolerance has disappeared now, but it was originally tolerance. It’s sort of a live-and-let-live attitude that allows certain political points of view to flourish. I prosecuted the case involving a cult that came up from L.A. to Oregon and was virtually an all-black cult by the name of the Ecclesia Athletic Association. They ended up beating children, and it was basically human slavery. That was around 1990, and the leader was a guy named Eldridge Broussard. Anyway, I mentioned that because they came on the heels of the Rajneesh. I was involved in the Rajneesh case, and in both those cases, Oregonians were tolerant at first.

They said, “The Rajneesh, they just want to live their life out there in central Oregon, and they’re doing good things with the land, and let them do it.” Lo and behold, it turned out to be a criminal enterprise, and that’s to put it mildly. And, of course, with Ecclesia Athletic it turned out to be a criminal enterprise that resulted in the death of one girl and numerous children being beaten over time. This all goes back to what I was saying, that there’s a tolerance, and historically it’s been that way. The [current brand of] tolerance has gone so far to the extreme now that they just don’t tolerate dissent.